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The Moving Finger Writes

By Stanley Fish December 10, 2006 10:30 pmDecember 10, 2006 10:30 pm

In a week when Michael Richards’s racist rant continues to be news, Mark McGwire’s election to baseball’s Hall of Fame seems in doubt, and Bill Frist leaves both the Senate and the race for president, it may be time to reflect on a pattern in American culture that as yet has no name, though it has many instances. Someone says something or does something – or does something by saying something – and within a short time it is recognized as a blunder of the first order. Almost immediately the debate is about whether the offender will ever recover.

Examples are not hard to come by. One of the first characterizations of the Richards fiasco described him as pulling a Mel Gibson, already shorthand for out-of-control-celebrity spews racist venom. Just before the midterm election, John Kerry botched the punch line of a joke, and word went out that he had called soldiers serving in Iraq dumb. (He meant to call George Bush dumb, but that might have been only marginally less damaging.) By evening the TV pundits had already written him off as a candidate in 2008, and the next morning Don Imus asked him to do Democrats a favor and stay home until the election was over.

Kerry is an old hand at this kind of thing. “I voted for it before I voted against it” (or was it the other way around?; it doesn’t matter), “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.” Indeed, Kerry is so talented in this vein that he doesn’t have to say anything; any photo op will do. Whether it’s windsurfing and looking like an Eastern liberal dilettante, or wearing hunter’s gear and looking like an Eastern liberal dilettante trying to look like a regular blue-collar guy, or donning a spacesuit and looking like a huge Pillsbury Doughboy or the Michelin Man, the guy can’t appear in public without endangering his career.

Of course Kerry is not the only politician to put his foot (and sometimes his whole body) in his mouth. None of his photo ops was quite as disastrous as Michael Dukakis’s turn as a tank driver, complete with helmet. And “I voted for it before I voted against it” has its antecedent in Bill Clinton’s “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”; both were attempts at sophistication and nuance that came out sounding like evasion and double talk. (“I did not have sex with that woman” sounded straightforward at first, but when it turned out that in saying it, Clinton was parsing the sex act in ways one might call Jesuitical, the statement became fodder for parody on late-night TV, where it still resides.) And who can forget – who will allow us to forget – Howard Dean’s scream?
Kerry, then, is continuing a Democratic Party tradition, but it’s not only the Democratic Party. The fact that no one to this day knows quite what “macaca” means, or whether George Allen meant anything at all by it, didn’t stop the uttering of the word from derailing his campaign. “Mission accomplished” (or “George Bush reporting that I’ve done my duty”) had a nice ring to it in 2003, but now it is the bell tolling the demise of the Bush presidency. And although there are many reasons for the failure of the Frist candidacy to catch on – how about no identifiable position, no charisma and no constituency, for starters – surely one was his diagnosis at long distance of Terry Schiavo’s condition, an act of presumption that seemed even more egregious because he is a physician. And then there was Mitt Romney’s father George, whose own presidential ambitions were doomed the moment he explained a change of heart on Vietnam by saying (in 1967) that he had been brainwashed. Presumably, he spelled brainwashed correctly, putting him one up on Dan Quayle, who will always be remembered as the vice president who couldn’t spell potato.

OK, so Republicans do it, Democrats do it, superstar actors do it, one-hit-wonder comedians do it. But what, exactly, is it? Well, it comes in more than one variety. The constant is the phenomenon of the watershed moment, the equivalent of “jumping the shark” in politics and public life: you’re going along just fine, and then you say something or do something and before you know it, you’re toast.

The variety inheres in the kind of thing you say or do and the predictability of the outcry that follows. There are the missteps that you would have drawn back from had you the presence of mind to do so. Surely Michael Richards and Mel Gibson wish they could have their moments back again; no one could think that in the 21st century venting against Jews and blacks would have no consequences. And had Jesse Jackson known that every bit of an interview would reach the light of day, he would have thought twice or more about calling New York “Hymietown.”

But Howard Dean could not have known that his expression of enthusiasm and determination (Alan Greenspan would have called it irrational exuberance) would be heard as the sound of someone out of control. Mark McGwire could not have known that his refusal to talk about the past at a Congressional hearing (in hindsight, he should have ducked it) would be heard as an admission of guilt. George Romney could not have known that by using one metaphor rather than another – he could have said “I was snowed,” and it would have been hard for his opponents to pick up that ball and run with it – he was ending his political career. Al Gore could not have known that his claim to have facilitated the creation of the Internet would have morphed immediately into the (risible) claim to have invented the Internet.

This second category – of disasters seen as such only in retrospect, although “retrospect” may be a matter of seconds – is the more interesting because there is no way to anticipate what happens. The lead singer of the Dixie Chicks might have thought that a few people would take it badly when, as a Texan, she apologized to the world for giving it George Bush. But the concerted campaign against her and the group in the country music world probably came as an unwelcome surprise. Former Harvard president Larry Summers no doubt expected that some people would be put off by his speculation that scientific aptitude might have a gender basis, but he did not imagine months of being roasted over a spit in public and the long, slow march to a resignation.

You can advise people not to make racist or anti-Semitic remarks or even to refrain from saying anything about race, religion or gender at all. But what advice could you give that would protect someone from a turn of phrase that someone else makes into something never intended? Never say anything that could be misappropriated? You might as well recommend saying nothing, though even that won’t always work, for you can always be faulted by the press or your enemies (sometimes a distinction without a difference) for having been silent when there was a moral issue to be faced and pronounced on. I suppose you could get out of public life altogether, but domestic life also holds out the possibility of saying something that forever alters your future for the worse; think of marriage.

I guess the only wisdom – and it is no help at all – was offered long ago in the verse my mother recited to me more times than I can remember:

The moving finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

Come to think of it, tears themselves can be the writing that time cannot erase or take back, as Edmund Muskie learned when he cried – or appeared to cry; again it doesn’t matter – in New Hampshire and left his presidential hopes in the snow.

If most of these innocuous comments or actions had such deadly professional consequences, how do we explain President Bush’s photos looking through binoculars with their caps still on, reading books held upside down, etc., or the many outrageous verbal faux pas now called “Bushisms” — all of which seem not to have harmed his public standing at all? We have film clips of Bush and Chaney denying that they ever said what we have film clips of them saying. And no one cares! Maybe that brilliant comment about Reagan’s being a “teflon president” is what needs to be examined.

“The moving finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on;,,,,,,,,,,” was true then, before the 24/newsday when stories are played over and over like a broken record.
If you only see or hear a story once or even twice, sooner or later it will fade into the background.
Today with so much newstime and space alloted, news is if not fabricated, is recycled into seeming eternity.
The media’s quest for a story that “sells” and can be replayed is more important than what we used to call “NEWS.”
News was “new” at a time. Today it is rehashed garbage, meaning that stories of the lowest importance are the most run by the “media.”
It is the kind of “gotcha” the media plays, for a sound-bite that encourages only low abled or low caring persons to seek high office.
It must be like walking through a minefield for politicians and others in high office – whenever they open their mouths, and even present themselves in public (remembering how often Gerald Ford’s gaffe was replayed, and President H.W. Bush at dinner in Japan).
Think the problem is largely the visual media, its like they/we can’t not look at catastrophic events near us, or on TV even when we want to. The media says “here take a look, a long look and we’ll show it again and again. You’ll never tire of it – we can resurect is anytime, and you will look again and again”. Witness MSNBC which cannot wait to get over the ho-hum stories of today, to play and replay their “Investigation” series, involving crime and violence, largely looking into prisonsand interviewing perpertrators that society as a rule has call outcast and shouldn’t be seen or heard.

Ah, another person whose mother quoted those Gibran lines to them repeatedly. Humans are fallible and for the most part (Michael Richards excepted) deserve forgiveness. Gibran’s words instilled a life-long guilt in me and the belief that any mistake I made could not be forgotten or forgiven.

Re: The Dixie Chicks: My response to Natalie Maines’ statement was that I was (and am) ashamed that George W. Bush is from the United States. Maines and the other “Chicks” have also had the integrity to maintain that they really have nothing for which to apologize, see their Grammy nominated song, “Not Ready to Make Nice.”

I don’t always agree with you, but I look forward to your essays and I thought this piece to be spot on. I myself am in a profession that you know well, I teach at a college….and I often wonder what will happen when I make mistakes [not in the form of Mr. Richards and Mr. Gibson] and they end up on YouTube or some other network site because the students are taking pictures of our lectures (without faculty knowing it) on their cell phones and posting them out of context … I guess as you note, we live in culture that does not allow for human error and honest mistakes, any longer.

I agree with Mr. Simpson. What’s most fascinating about this is how some seem immune (Reagan), and some seem to be the typhoid-Marys of public life. Jerry Ford couldn’t chew gum without getting trashed (I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was Lyndon Johnson who said Ford couldn’t “Chew gum and walk across a room at the same time.” That picture of him stumbling (on a airplane staircase?) was played a billion times (and recall he was a talented college football player).

There came a point in Nixon’s career where the papers always printed a picture of him with his nose drooling, his mouth twisted, or his his eyes crossed (preferably all three). Of course (as we who have digital cameras know) if you take enough pictures, many of them will make your brother-in-law look the fool. Fortunately, no one puts my family on the front page of the Times.

Surely this precedes modern communication: remember Thomas Nast skewering his 19th century targets again and again. And if some scholar of ancient Rome enters this discussion, I’m sure we’ll find there’s similar graffiti on the Coliseum.

So there must be some social or cultural theme behind these cases: perhaps the political world simply will never forgive Kerry for putting voice to the concern for the “last man to die in Vietnam,” that even as Ford saved us from Agnew, he was stepping into tainted ground, replacing a soiled president. And Watergate may have been a step too far, as was Monica.

But the simple substance of the remark can’t have trumps — I (fondly?) remember Reagan’s comment about the final thoughts of the bomber crewman as it plunged toward the ground (which apparently came from a war movie).

this is the price of the digital age, when our all too human moments, that few of us can actually control, are recorded for all time and placed on YouTube to be called up whenever people start to forget. it renders impossible that admonition from long ago to “not keep a record of wrongs.” no second chances in the 21st century.

For Bridget (Post #1). I think you’re misinterpreting Fitzgerald’s famous remark. He didn’t say there are no second CHANCES; he was saying that American lives did not develop, did not unfold the way that second acts of plays do. (You know, “the plot thickens.”)

He was observing (whether accurately or not doesn’t matter much – it was clever, regardless) that American lives seem to happen in a Gatsby sort of way. There is nothing, then suddenly there’s a great deal, with no perceptible transition. Think “flash in the pan” or “overnight success.”

I envision thousands of fireflies in a very black night, each tiny light a surprise, winking on, shining for a moment, and then vanishing forever. That’s what “no second acts” conveys to me. Nothing, then suddenly a bright little something, then nothing.

The impact of these quick impressions comes from the unwillingness of so much of the public to think things through, to assemble the whole picture, to follow the long term. In a sense, we are bombarded with so much useless information (the identity of Michael Richards, the sentiments of the Dixie Chicks) that we need this easy stuff to screen some of it out. It works best when the event symbolizes something we know to be a problem — Clinton’s adultery, Frist’s exploitation of his medical background — but even then, it too often mixes the trivial with the significant. Adultery does not affect the nation’s policies in the same waay as the exploitation or continuation of one’s previous business connections. These distinctions are lost in the photo ops and sound bites.

As evidenced by the Democrats’ recent success in last month’s elections, Howard Dean’s “scream” was far from career-ending. He even joked about it–in French–in his keynote address at the Canadian Liberal Party Convention.

I think it comes down to this: Greed and the social need for recognition or approval. The media and its performers, that promote a gaffe into a persistent, career-ending, attack, care more about selling newspapers, or getting viewers than they do about objective evaluation and reporting. I wish Was it Mark Twain who said of journalists “..they never let the truth get in the way of a good story…” There is too much truth in it. The individual performers, columnists, comedians, etc., who need approval will, like perpetual adolescents, ride sterotypes about ethnics, elderly, politicians, lawyers, sex always gets attention, et al., and do almost anything, to get a laugh. Likewise, vicious gossip is motivated by a need for social recognition and approval, irrespective of the truth, in everyday life.
We all have a sense of humor which plays on sterotypes-funny when we know them to be sterotypes and not the general truth; but repeat it often enough, as Pavlov said, and it becomes ‘common knowledge.’
There are rules of conduct in science, and rules of evidence in law, that stifle gossip and character assassination, but journalisn, along with entertainment and common gossip are undisciplined, without understanding or boundaries. Some criminals are willing to kill for recognition. Many journalists and editors are willing to destroy lives and careers for the selfish end of recognition. What we need are real, disciplined, professionals in journalism to modulate the gossip and entertainment and more real talent in entertainment.

Daisy – the lines about the moving finger are not from Gibran, but Omar Khayyam of Naishapur, as translated by Edward Fitzgerald.

Incidentally, I think that some people don’t suffer for their errors because its in keeping with their public image. Verbal slips by Reagan and Bush seem endearing and folksy. John Kerry’s recent slip of the tongue provided his opponents with confirmation of their deepest suspicions about him.

I remember a speech by a college dean in which he explained that children are domesticated by their parents, that is taught the rules of the house (domus), and then, as young adults, they are civilised by their college, that is taught the rules of the civis.

For weeks afterwards, students complained that ‘The dean said we need to be domesticated, he thinks we’re like animals.’ As with the Kerry example, the problem was that the phrase confirmed, in the minds of some students, the suspicions that they had already formed about the dean.

Dr. Fish left out all the comments made by elected officials regarding Hurricane Katrina and the terrible damage and dislocation done in its wake. See Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge, for a collection of them, including the one by Barbara Bush, the mother of our president. She said, “so many of the people in the arena here, you know were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.” (p.466). Perhaps most will be forgiven because they were under great stress; and in fact, Mayor Negin was re-elected despite being remote and incoherent following the deluge.

Adults are supposed to be able to see the “big picture,” and not be distracted by minor incidents and forgivable gaffes. I think Prof. Fish’s essay demonstrates how childish public discourse has become.

Why is this so? The 24-hour news cycle is one reason. The belief that hypocracy is the greatest sin in America is another. The lack of professionalism in the media seems to be another — it’s easier to have an opinion about Mel Gibon’s stupid remark than to examine the Baker-Hamilton report in detail.

To Daisy (post #4): Not to pick nits, but I thnk you have confused the author of the verse (Omar Khayyam) with Khalil Gibran. If I may put this delicately: I don’t think Gibran’s poems had yet acheived popularity during Prof. Fish’s childhood.

If the point of your piece was to look for a name (because what you describe certianly is a phenomenon), might I suggest ‘mif’ (media induced frenzy). We will know if it really catches on if people start using it as a verb: “to mif or not to mif, that is the question” well you get the idea.

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Stanley Fish is a professor of humanities and law at Florida International University, in Miami. In the Fall of 2012, he will be Floersheimer Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Duke University and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of 15 books, most recently “Versions of Antihumanism: Milton and Others”; “How to Write a Sentence”; “Save the World On Your Own Time”; and “The Fugitive in Flight,” a study of the 1960s TV drama. “Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution” will be published in 2014.